Texas-headquartered Utility has produced hydrogen using gases generated by a steel plant’s blast furnace with its electrochemical reactor.
The company’s H2Gen system started production at a “major steel plant in North America” in November 2023 and operated for over 3,000 hours, using blast furnace off-gas to produce hydrogen.
It is based on Utility’s electroless coupled exchange reduction oxidation (eXERO) platform and converts steam and off-gas into hydrogen and “enriched CO2” through an electrochemical process without external electrical inputs.
Furthermore, the company says the system can switch from producing to standby and back to producing within 20 minutes to ensure flexibility with operations.
The firm claims the technology offers a low-cost, feedstock-versatile and modular solution for hydrogen production. However, it does not appear the H2Gen system has in-built carbon capture capabilities.
In September 2024, Utility raised $53m in Series C financing from ArcelorMittal’s XCarb Innovation Fund, Aramco Ventures and more. Now it aims to rapidly commercialise the technology, having appointed former Hyzon boss Parker Meeks as its CEO in February.
Meeks said the steel plant deployment proved the firm could “deliver scalable, economic, clean hydrogen solutions” that can integrate with existing infrastructure.
“H2Gen is the only commercially viable solution for producing clean hydrogen in hard-to-abate industries like steelmaking,” he added.
Utility believes the technology could produce hydrogen for “immediate industrial use,” such as reductants in blast furnaces or in direct reduce iron (DRI) plants.
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